“No, he had a lobotomy and he’s a prince of a fellow.”
Mom laughs too hard at that, rewarding me for joking with her. Then, her eyebrows all crinkled up high and happy, she waits for me to say more. I have nothing.
“Anything else happen today?”
I pick through the avalanche of unbelievable things that happened today and try to grab on to one that she can handle. There isn’t one. I can’t even make something up. I’ve been at parties—everyone drinking, smoking weed—and listened to girls step out onto the patio, then chat happily with their moms about how they’re watching True Blood at Olivia’s house and can they spend the night? Then Olivia calls her mom and asks the same thing, then they both get wasted and stay out all night. I could never have gotten away with that with Mom. She knows me too well. One word and she would have been all, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” She can literally read my mind. Obviously, until today there wasn’t much I cared if she read. She even bragged about it: “Aubrey and I don’t have any secrets from each other.”
Tone, I guess. The words aren’t even that important; she just knows me so well that if I open my mouth, if I say one, single word now, it’ll be, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” So I can’t open my mouth.
When I don’t speak, she gives me the look that is under all the other looks. It is so basic it doesn’t even have a number. It is just Hunger, and if I pause even long enough to translate that one, it will eat me alive.
She finally shakes her head, allows me to shut the door, and I have a few minutes of peace. I know it won’t last. I know that, at that very moment, she’s checking in with her twin, and the instant that Dori tells her about the “heatstroke” she’ll be all over me.
Which she is. A few minutes later, she bursts back into my room with eighteen different drinks including Pedialyte, which she must have had left over from when I had measles.
“Oh, hon, why didn’t you tell me? I’m so sorry that I snapped at you.” She perches on the edge of the bed next to me. When she feels my forehead, her hand is cool against my skin and makes me feel like I am really sick.
“Baby, you’re hot. I’m going to see if I can get you in to see Dr. Queng.”
Yeah, I really want to sit in a waiting room with a big LEGO table and an American Girl video playing to see the pediatrician who set my arm when I broke it falling off the deck in Twyla’s backyard. “No, Mom, I’m fine. Really.”
“We can just go to emergency walk-in. I’m sure I can get them to work you in.”
Mom knows every nurse in Parkhaven and they all love her so much that I always kind of get treated like a celebrity when I’m sick. Which I usually like. But not today. “Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m fine. I just need to rest. I know my own body.”
“OK, hon. OK.” She sticks a giant glass of ice water with a bendy straw poking out into my hands and I sip while she goes into nurse mode and arranges my covers, fluffing them up so that they float back down on me all cool and neat. I love nurse mode. She folds the sheet over the light blanket so that my chin touches only soft cotton. I feel tiny and taken care of. She’s about to leave, then stops and says, “Your lips look dry.”
I hold up the ice water.
She puts the back of her hand on my cheek. It feels so good I have to fight the desire to nuzzle against it. So good that, for a second, I almost think I can spend the whole, entire rest of my life riding the Teacups.
AUGUST 13, 2009
Early the next morning, Mom bursts into my room wearing her gray scrubs. She hates scrubs and says that the hospitals where she consults might be able to force her to wear them, but they can’t force her to wear ones that are pink or have